It is conventional in shopping carts to provide advertising display units on the basket sidewalls so as to permit merchants to advertise or promote various items, such as for either advertising in-store specials or nationally promoted items. The advertising units are conventionally mounted on outer sides of the side and front walls of the basket, and also often on the inner side of the basket front wall so as to provide significant exposure to customers of the items being promoted. The advertising unit conventionally comprises a platelike base member having a surrounding rectangular rim, and a rectangular ring-shaped cover member which releasably overlies the base member to clampingly hold a disposable sheetlike advertisement therebetween. The advertisement is conventionally printed on paperboard or heavy paper so as to be readily positionable within the advertising unit, and readily removed and disposed of when desired.
One of the known and more conventionally utilized advertising units employs base and cover members which are molded of a plastics material, with the base and cover members being permanently hingedly joined together along one edge by an integrally molded plastic hinge. Releasable latch structures cooperate between other sides of the cover and opposed sides of the base member rim. With this arrangement, the cover can be manually unlatched from the base so as to swing outwardly to permit access between the cover and base for insertion and removal of advertisements. While this advertisement unit is desirable in terms of facilitating opening and closing of the cover so as to permit insertion and removal of advertisements, nevertheless it has been observed that the integral plastic hinge is subject to failure after a minimum number of opening/closing cycles, and then requires removal of the advertising unit and replacement thereof since repair is difficult and impractical.
In another known advertising unit as utilized on shopping carts, an attempt has been made to avoid the problems associated with units having integrally molded hinges by making the cover and base members totally separate, whereby the unit is totally free of hinges. In this latter unit, the cover and base are each molded of plastic material, but are not hinged together. Rather, releasable latches are provided for cooperation between each side of the cover and each side of the base rim. Hence, the cover in its entirety can be totally removed from the base. This, however, can also be disadvantageous since if total removal of the cover is required each time an advertisement is changed, then this requires the attendant to manipulate both the cover and the advertisement while at the same time positioning them relative to the cart. Needless to say, this display unit is more difficult to manually manipulate with respect to insertion and removal of advertisements. Further, this cover is believed more difficult to remove from the rim. In an attempt to solve this problem, this known advertising display unit provides a narrow slot along one side thereof which is provided to assist in permitting insertion of the advertisement without removing the cover. However, while insertion of the advertisement through the slot is possible, nevertheless this has proven difficult in some instances, particularly if the advertisement is of heavy, stiff or thick cardboard. Further, removal of the advertisement through the slot is extremely difficult and time consuming, particularly if it is of a heavy material, and thus total removal of the cover in such instance is required.
Thus, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved advertising display unit particularly for use on shopping cart baskets, which unit is believed to represent a significant improvement and in fact overcomes many of the disadvantages associated with known units, as explained above.
In the improved advertising display unit of the present invention, the base and cover members are joined by a readily separable hinge which permits the cover member to be readily swingably moved between open and closed positions and additionally permits the cover member to remain in a angled opened position wherein it is stably supported by the base member so that the attendant has both hands free to facilitate removal and insertion of an advertisement, but wherein the cover member can also be readily totally separated from the base member merely by lifting the cover member upwardly relative to the base member when in the open position to effect separation of the hinge structure. This facilitates both manufacture, assembly and maintenance of the display unit, and also provides for efficient and convenient utilization thereof.
Other objects and purposes of the invention will be apparent to persons familiar with structure of this general type upon reading the following specification and inspecting the accompanying drawings.